


Different Meanings, Same Effect

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angry Sex, Drunk Sex, M/M, Neither of these two is okay, Non-Explicit Sex, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-14
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-21 02:11:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Looking back, the part of Clint that isn’t a nice person at all – the part that clawed its way out of the circus and survived every hit thrown at him and kills people for a living and kind of enjoys that – that part of him likes to blame Steve and Thor.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>It’s not fair, but then, that’s sort of the point.</i><br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Different Meanings, Same Effect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StarlingGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlingGirl/gifts).



> Prompt: drunk!Tony, angry!Clint

Looking back, the part of Clint that isn’t a nice person at all – the part that clawed its way out of the circus and survived every hit thrown at him and kills people for a living and kind of enjoys that – that part of him likes to blame Steve and Thor.

It’s not fair, but then, that’s sort of the point.

But Steve and Thor were what had been getting under his skin at the time. Steve and Thor and that ridiculously happy romance of theirs they had going. Clint’s not particularly given to introspection, given that it tends to slow him down, and also given that all his superiors back since he was about five (he gives that as the cut-off date because his memories are pretty hazy beforehand, which might be more generous than they merit) like to list off his faults whenever his assets seem pretty lacking. And also because stopping to examine just why two people obviously being blissfully in love like a Hallmark card pisses him off is never going to help him – at least, not in any way not sponsored by the therapists at SHIELD, who have way too much fun with him as it is.

Then again, the killing bastard side of Clint is also more than happy to apportion blame to Tony, because for all that it’s a bit of a dick, it’s not blind.

“Hey, Barton.”

Clint rolls his eyes; lets loose another arrow. “What?”

“We should have sex.”

Tony will never know how lucky he was that Clint had already fired. Especially because he reckons that if he hits the exactly the right spot – the way he always does – his EMP arrows could still knock that suit for six.

“Little preoccupied right now, Stark.”

“Likewise,” Tony’s voice says in his ear, as Iron Man flies past Clint’s field of vision, raining flares down to disorient and generally bother slime demons from the Hell dimensions or whatever these things were. (Clint doesn’t focus on briefings beyond which bits he’s supposed to be shooting – he sees well enough to gather everything else on the spot – and Tony doesn’t focus at all, meaning Clint’s word is basically law.) “But after. Sex? We should be doing that.”

Clint allows himself a roll of his eyes. “Can’t help the noticing the ‘should’.”

“Only you and I can save mankind,” Tony declares, and then zooms overhead to fight the good fight and not answer any of Clint’s (confused) expletives.

It’s not like Clint doesn’t expect Tony to proposition people. Tony Stark might be some sort of genius engineer or however they phrase it on the briefs that he isn’t authorised to read, but he also specialises in getting drunk and somehow continuously successfully talking people into bed. Which is fine, Clint’s not a prude, he knows sex doesn’t mean a thing these days. If he was offended then Tony wouldn’t still be walking after basically every sentence he utters, seeing as apparently come-ons are just his speech patterns, like Thor’s more archaic language or Steve’s heroic speeches. 

It’s just that, truth be told, even by Tony’s standards this is a little blunt. 

Like Clint isn’t even worth the effort of seducing.

This particular piece of analysis occurs to him back at the Tower, and needless to say, it sounds as unpleasant as it sounds true. Clint isn’t exactly the refined one on this team, and Tony has no doubt hacked enough files and guessed the rest to build a pretty good picture of how Clint and Natasha’s relationship has worked in the past. 

What does not help is thinking all of this while Steve and Thor are in the room.

It’s not ‘cute’ in the traditional way. For all that they both have more than a touch of puppies about them, they’re both warriors and neither of them are the snuggling type. Clint’s not expecting to come down to see them baking together in matching heart aprons and feeding each other chocolates or whatever it is happy couples do in real life.

But there are these horribly sappy smiles and they’re in this space between ‘talking’ and ‘fucking’ that Clint isn’t familiar with at all. So no, they’re not as bad as they could be, but they do have no sense of personal space and Steve has this blush Clint did not want to see on Captain America’s face (he can feel what little patriotism he has ever had forced into him dying its final death) and Thor won’t stop grinning and Clint isn’t even certain they’re going to have sex tonight. Horror of horrors, he thinks they are actually just going to sit on the couch together – or the beanbag if Thor can talk Steve into it – and watch some more of the movies on the list Clint and Tony put together of every film people have to watch to be around them. 

Clint can feel his eye twitching at the very thought.

He’s not sulking out here on the balcony. He’s not. He likes being high-up and he likes being able to see everything – everything that isn’t those two – and this is all really normal for him.

“You think about what I said?” comes a voice from behind him. Clint rolls his eyes.

“You mean did I think about the worst sex proposal I’ve heard in my life?”

“Please, you and I both know that’s not the worst.”

It wasn’t. Not by a long shot. But Clint does not appreciate these things, privately or out loud, so he decides to try this blunt approach that Tony’s apparently going in for and asks, “Why?”

“I said – ”

“Yeah, you said saving mankind. The hell?”

After a silence that sends more than a few alarm bells ringing, he cautiously looks over, to see Tony looking at him with a raised eyebrow. “Because of what’s going on in there,” he finally says, jerking his head towards the door.

Clint reckons he knows what Tony’s talking about, but he’s a little surprised to hear that he doesn’t approve. Fortunately, Tony doesn’t need any torture to talk – he just does it anyway.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for them, because I can’t stand either of them moping. At least this way we get happy puppies instead of sad ones. No, my point is, that? That is not normal. That is fluffy and cute and the universe has to be rebalanced before it explodes or falls into the sun or something.”

This is…new. “You want us to have sex because Cap and Thor are cute together?” He’s careful to load the word ‘cute’ with as much derision as he can manage, which fortunately is quiet a lot. Unfortunately, if Tony responded to derision, then, well, he wouldn’t be Tony Stark, now would he?

“I’m just saying that we need a pair of bastards to balance them out, and I’m fairly certain Natasha would bite my head off afterwards even if she didn’t do it first, which leaves us two.”

Still not the worst Clint has ever heard. Dear God, his life is fucked up.

“You know that’s preying mantises, right?” he asks, because avoidance is what he does best, and even in spirit Natasha is good for heading off conversations he wants very much not to be having. “Black widows eat their mates. All of them.”

Tony turns a satisfying shade of green. “You’re alive,” he notes.

“What can I say?” Clint says, preening. “She likes me best.”

Then he uses that flimsy excuse – he knows it’s flimsy, but he’s an awesome badass secret agent who shoots people with a bow and arrow, he can make anything work – to beat a hasty retreat.

Sex with Tony, for whatever reason, would be a really bad idea. He knows this, acknowledges this, and for once in his life he has decided that he will therefore not let it happen. If Natasha knew – not that he will ever be telling her about this, because he’s actually not convinced that Tony’s wrong about needing something other than adorableness in this Tower and he doesn’t need her taking him down in sparring over that – he thinks that she would be proud of him.

Of course, as he reflects just a few days later at some sort of Christmas charity do that the Avengers have naturally been invited to (because when you look at a bunch of people dressed in ridiculous outfits fighting a giant sea monster trying to eat Manhattan, you naturally feel that these are the sort of people you want rubbing elbows with the pick of the social elite), this wouldn’t be the first time he’s let someone down. It’s not even the fist time this week. That’s what Clint does.

It’s little comfort to know that Natasha would already be disappointed with him just because of how he’s feeling right now. If she knew that he is currently seething over the sight of Steve and Thor out in the open, smiling at each other over the tops of socialites’ heads, she would soon remedy the situation. With knives.

Being Natasha, she probably already knows. 

Only he wonders whether she knows just how angry he is right now. He’s past casual annoyance – say, as if somebody was talking really loud into their phone – and past eye-twitching irritation – say, popping your gum endlessly (not that Clint has never done this himself, he is, after all, quite the bastard, Tony-approved and everything) – and now he’s very much into the kind of anger that kind of whites out everything else. It’s petty and it’s pathetic and gee, that only makes him feel worse. There is a little bubble of perfect floating in the middle of this room, and Clint is so maladjusted and childish that all he wants to do is pop it, just to make himself feel better.

It’s not fair. It’s as irrational as that: whining over other people not having fucked up lives (even though he knows that’s not true, everybody Steve grew up with is either dead or dying and Thor is never getting his old family back and either doesn’t realise or won’t admit it, but this is the kind of reasonable argument that only makes the world rankle more, logic is like fucking sandpaper when he’s like this). 

There’s a word for this: vicious circle. Which is two words, and now he really wants to see if he can use this glass to knock somebody’s hat off. Or perhaps just casually kill whoever it is that’s laughing like that – that horrible tittering shriek that he can’t locate because it sounds like it’s coming from everywhere.

Point is, the angrier Clint gets, the more other things start pissing him off. Generally he’s fine, being usually far up enough to escape it all if he wants, or with somebody else to pass on his annoyance to, or even having the option to just fucking leave. But no, he is trapped in here, and maybe that more than anything is what’s making him feel so edgy, like something’s walking over him in very small but very spiky shoes.

Fuck, he wants to punch Steve. Or Thor. He wouldn’t survive either, so maybe he should go for the big guy. And again, he knows it’s not their fault, and that makes him want to do it even more.

“You should go home,” Natasha’s voice says softly from next to him.

The reason is obvious – Clint’s practically vibrating with how much he wants to lash out at something – but it gives him some temporary satisfaction to snarl, “Why?”

She just looks at him. Naturally, that is the last thing he wants, because now, now it feels like she’s trying to be superior. And she is, he knows she is, he’s already angry at himself for saying that and saying it _like_ that, fuck, he is way too far gone. He can only hope he’s sending out some sort of telepathic warning signals to keep everybody who can’t beat him in a fight far away from him.

“I can’t go,” he growls. “Fury made it pretty clear that we have to stay put. That’s the only reason you’re here,” he adds, with a vicious grin. 

“I’m also here to keep an eye on you all,” she informs him coolly. 

“You worried Cap and Thor are going to do it in front of everybody?” As soon as the words leave him, he knows he’s made a mistake, since Natasha isn’t so much sighing as hissing.

“That’s what this is about,” she states, not even bothering to pretend it’s a question.

He waits for her pick apart all the reasons that’s stupid; for the reminder that he is a child and doesn’t deserve to so much as be in the same room as these people.

Instead, she leans in closer – doesn’t touch him, fuck, she knows him too well – and says, “Don’t think that I’m sending you home. Think of it as a necessary escort mission.”

He frowns. “What?”

She gestures with a glance and a raised eyebrow, the way that only Natasha can, and Clint realises with a dawning mix of horror and disappointment that he’s missed Tony’s slow but inevitable slide into inebriation for the evening.

For a guy who has been going to these things all his life, Tony sure doesn’t seem to have a healthy way of dealing with them.

Actually, thinking that through, that’s not a contradiction at all. That’s natural.

All things considered, Tony’s doing pretty well. He’s standing up straight – mostly – and he’s definitely nowhere near that footage Clint saw on YouTube from That Birthday Party. But he is swaying a little bit, he’s smiling a lot more openly than is normal (Clint can tell from here that it’s not the public smile he’s seen Tony rehearsing in every surface he can find when he thinks nobody’s watching), and yeah, he just downed that champagne flute like it was water and is already reaching out for the next one.

Normally the side of Clint that’s a sadistic bastard would be more than content to just stand back and wait to see what chaos is brewing this time. There are protocols these days to make sure he can’t get to the suit – at Pepper and Rhodey’s insistence – but Tony never really needed the suit to make a public ass of himself.

Unfortunately, this time ‘round Tony is here as part of the Avengers. There’s no Pepper on hand to save the day, which means…

…right. Which usually means Steve has to stand in.

Steve, whom Thor has finally dragged onto the dance floor and is trying really hard not to act like he’s enjoying this. (Also, when the hell did Thor learn how to slow dance? Is this another one of those things that Jane and Darcy decided to tell him made him a viable mate?) Who is finally having a nice night out with his boyfriend and fuck, this isn’t fair, and Clint doesn’t know who he’s talking about when he says that.

He looks at Natasha. She looks back at him.

“Don’t make me deal with him,” is all that she says. It’s enough to paint a rather vivid picture in Clint’s mind.

What the hell? Tonight’s been such a swell time so far; might as well top it off with dealing with a drunken billionaire.

“Come on, Stark,” he mutters in Tony’s ear, pointedly removing the latest glass from his hand and, yeah, downing it himself. 

“Are you saying I’ve had enough? I feel like I’m being judged. Are you judging me?”

“No,” Clint informs him, actually kind of meaning it as well. “I just want an excuse to get out of here.”

He has no idea how that works. The whole ride back in the limo (bits of Clint are still kind of excited about the fact that he _has a freaking limo_ , or at least a sixth of one, but these are not the same bits currently fuming away over his own fucked-up brain) he ponders this, as far as he manages to think about that rather than punching the window. Getting out of there at least means that he can think at all – despite Tony being his usual upbeat drunken self.

The answer becomes all too clear back at the Tower. Clint manages to toss Tony onto what is really a very ridiculously large bed and turns to go, and Tony says, “So, sex?”

Clint stops in the doorway.

“Why are you so fucking determined to manage my worst pick-up-line?” he demands. “Because unless you’re about to throw up in an alleyway somewhere, you aren’t even close.”

Tony considers this. “You said yes, didn’t you?”

That really isn’t important right now. “Stark, you are fucking drunk. That is the only reason you want to do this.”

“Lies,” Tony sings out, apparently ignoring the odd bits of self-deprecation that sneak out when Clint has a lot of rage simmering away nicely. “I asked when I was sober, so that counts when I’m drunk. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“You really don’t.” Clint scowls at him, more than anything because honestly? He wants to. He does. Tony’s not exactly hard on the eyes and he’s got a point when he says that together there’s enough bastard to easily balance out Steve and Thor. Clint’s been thinking it over and he thinks he knows what Tony was getting at with that ridiculous proposition: if they hooked up, it wouldn’t be soft and cuddly and full of feelings, and yeah, there’d be enough concentrated snark to blow up the Helicarrier. He knows Fury wasn’t sure about having them on the same team for pretty much this reason. (Okay, not the sex part, but definitely having two of the same type hanging around and undermining any and all authority in a hundred-mile radius.)

Except here’s the flipside to that plan: they’re fucked-up bastards, and this isn’t nice or sensible or anything. Right now they’re both pissed, and while it’s not in the same way, it’s having the same effect. This is the way mistakes are made.

“Never figured you for the responsible type, Barton,” Tony says clearly, like he’s provoking him with how sober he can sound. 

Clint thinks he actually growls at that. “You don’t know me, Stark.”

“I think I know that much.”

He moves to go – and then stops.

Where’s he going? Up to the balcony to fume over tonight? It’s not like all that anger’s gone – hell, Tony being like this is somehow making it worse, changing it into something different – and it’s not going to go until he’s wasted a night tossing and turning and shooting things in the range and wishing Natasha was here so he could fucking fight somebody.

Why does everybody think so much of him? Why do they think he’s a good person? Just because he’s hanging out with heroes these days doesn’t make him one.

He looks back. Tony’s sitting up in bed and watching him with a raised eyebrow. Not for the first time, Clint wonders whether being drunk isn’t a flipped switch by this point, but just a mood like being sad or happy or angry. Sure, when it’s bad it’s bad, but the more he watches he can tell that on the sliding scale this really isn’t too high. 

Much as he wishes he didn’t know this, he can tell that at least Tony is going to remember all this tomorrow. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Tony says, collapsing back onto the bed, legs akimbo in a way that doesn’t actually leave all that much to the imagination. Which is impressive for a suit as expensive as that one – or maybe Clint’s just used to people treating them with a bit more respect rather than like jogging bottoms. “You want this to be more than once, that’s fine with me. That work as fucking permission?”

Tongue loosening up. It sounds kind of weird still to hear Tony Stark swearing, but Clint’s at least getting more used to it these days, what with the outbursts when the hours in the workshop have worn down what little restraint Tony’s learnt over the years.

“You really think you’re better than me?”

No. Clint doesn’t. And that question’s enough to finally make him snap.

_Fuck it._

Like he said, they’re both pissed, just in different ways.

There are teeth and nails and kisses that probably need a word with less cutesy connotations. Clint’s not used to gentle sex and apparently Tony isn’t either, what with not even flinching when they hit the floor. It’s hard and a little bit violent, and yeah, uncomfortable as the realisation might be, it makes Clint feel worlds better. It’s like with Natasha, but where that was a coping mechanism and just another part of their partnership, somewhere around round three, as the dawn light catches them, enough of Clint surfaces from what might have been a haze of anger and arousal that realise that he’s kind of enjoying this. And judging by the groans underneath him, Tony’s not exactly bored either.

The others must get back at some point. Tony growls something along those lines into Clint’s collarbone, just before following it up with a bite, and Clint can only snarl something back about that being their problem. In fact, he deliberately does something that he’s found makes Tony make a sound that’s this close to howling, just to make sure everybody knows what they’re up to in here. Because the part of him that kills people takes the victories where it can, and it whispers _serve them fucking right_ when that doesn’t even make sense. They didn’t do anything. They made the mistake of coming close to him.

The only catch is that when Clint wakes up, vaguely realising that the sleeveless uniform is going to give him a few awkward moments (Tony has the suit, bastard, Clint can only hope he has to go to a lot of board meetings in the near future), he distinctly feels like he should be sneaking out with his tail between his legs.

Oh fuck. Fuck.

These are the fucking Avengers. He can’t just do this and pretend like it never happened, or like they’ll never see each other again. Clint fucking lives here, in the building that Tony owns.

He can do this – at least, he can get out of this room before Tony wakes up. He’s had plenty of one-night stands – he only wishes that this is the first time alcohol and anger have been involved – so he should be a dab hand at this. He’ll leave and he’ll let Natasha yell at him and it’ll all be so fucking awkward and he’ll fucking deserve it. He always does.

Only that plan goes to hell one second in – not a new record, seriously, why is Clint allowed to do anything – when he shifts slightly and Tony’s hand closes around his arm.

A glance across reveals Tony staring at him, and the bastard doesn’t even have the decency to look that hungover.

“Going somewhere?”

“That’s usually what happens at this point.”

Tony smiles. It’s not a nice smile, and it’s definitely not the reaction that anybody should have, and Clint recognises it all too well. “Barton, I said more than once was fine. And you were worried I’d forget.”

“I wasn’t,” he retorts. “I just figured you’d change your mind.” He leaves out the _most people do_.

“Barton,” Tony says, like saying Clint’s name helps him think or something, and managing to catch Clint's eye whether he wants him to or not, “you and me, we’re fucked-up people. It figures that when we finally did it, it'd be like this.

“But,” he adds, sliding closer as Clint's eyes slide away and his muscles tense for the fight and flight that rules his life, “what that _doesn't_ mean, Barton, is that it always has to be like that..”

Clint frowns. “Please don’t say you want a kiss and a cuddle.”

“Define ‘kiss’ and define ‘cuddle’.”

Clint can’t help but smile at that. “Horny bastard.”

“You love it,” Tony purrs, already curling closer.

“You know the moment we leave we’re going to have to start dealing with this? It’s not like we can pretend it never happened.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Tony informs him. “Pretending it never happened means we don’t have sex again, and yeah, not planning on that any time soon. Deal with it, Legolas.”

“Am I fulfilling some sort of fanboy fantasy now?”

“If you were, would I really tell you?” 

It’s actually ridiculous. They’re falling into a rhythm like this is somehow a normal relationship. It’s almost like they didn’t get here via serious psychological issues.

Then again, this means not talking about it. This means coasting along with somebody else who gets it but doesn’t feel like they have to talk about it.

Maybe that shouldn’t have its merits.

“Does this deal come with any benefits besides the sex?”

“Okay, offended now. Out.” Tony kicks out, but Clint has known for Natasha for years, making that just laughable. “I mean it, Barton. No more sex for you.”

“We’ll see about that.”

They’re fucked-up, yeah.

But when he catches sight of the spark in Tony’s eye – recalls that he actually kind of likes this guy, personality flaws and technical brilliance and suicidal strategies and sheer dumb luck all together – he reckons that, bizarrely, he might have fallen into something that works.

Not something pretty; that wouldn’t suit either them.

But for both of them, ‘functional’ is actually pretty good.

(And yeah, it doesn’t hurt that the sex wasn’t bad at all.)


End file.
